You knew I had to do it.
I mean, when John Kerry, a former Democratic Presidential nominee, says something this hypocritical, it's bound to get noticed.
When I heard it this morning on NPR's Brian Lehrer show, it almost floored me.
What did John Kerry say that got my attention (and that of many other people, as well?).
Well, here is the exact quote that raised many eyebrows, and has so many people talking and, frankly, pointing out the obvious:
"You just don't, in the 21st Century, behave in 19th Century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext."
Frankly, this is American exceptionalism at it's most sickening. When Putin's Russia invades Ukraine as the rest of the world watches and protests, there is John Kerry, among many other prominent "leaders" of America, blasting these actions and talking about how illegal it is. Yet, when Bush's America invaded Iraq, also as the rest of the world watched and protested, Kerry gave a vote that authorized Bush to go ahead with the invasion, because it was politically pragmatic to do so.
Here is a Vietnam veteran, a war here, even! He protested the war after coming back to America, disillusioned by it. When he had the opportunity, as a prominent member of Congress, to stand up and say no to a war with no justification, he failed to do it. He cast his vote in favor of war. Still, he blasted Bush's handling of the affair up to the lead-up to the actual invasion. When the war seemed to get complicated, Kerry criticized the handling of the war. But when Bush declared victory, and the United States celebrated (prematurely), Kerry also celebrated, and made it understood that he had favored war. When things started turning badly again, he once again became exclusively critical. A year or so later, when he was the leading Democratic candidate to run against Bush, he could not seemingly give a straight answer as to what his position on the Iraq war was, and this waffling became one of the major reasons that people simply did not have confidence in him.
Now, he is back, a decade later, this time as Secretary of State. And he say something like that, after being an obvious part of the problem regarding the whole Iraq fiasco. The United States was humiliated by the brashness of the obviously trumped up claims, and by the mixture of arrogance and ignorance (they too often seem to go hand in hand, don't they?) that Bush represented. They expected to show the world their military capabilities, and instead, showed more vulnerabilities than anything else. There was Abu Ghraib, and event that the rest of the world saw as an indicator or American hypocrisy. There were no bid contracts from corporations that revealed a clear conflict of interest. Now, there are 100,000 dead Iraqis, and over 4,000 Americans dead, as well. Obviously there are a lot of people that were seriously injured, as well. The war proved costly financially, as well.
But John F. Kerry would evidently like you to forget all of that. Surely, it's not at all relevant to what's happening now between Russia and Ukraine. Kerry has blood on his hands, having been part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, back then. He acted as a typical, self-serving politician with a false sense of entitlement could be expected to. it got him far - the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. But no further. He lost the election.
Now, he is trying to pose as an elder statesman, as a man knowledgeable in foreign affairs, lecturing Putin and Russia on behavior that he himself is no stranger to. Suddenly, since it is not America that is doing the invasion, his vision is clarity itself, and Russia and Putin are clearly in the wrong.
Most unbelievable of all, he does it with a straight face!
Oh, I'm sure that he would tell you that there is no comparison. I'm sure that he would tell you that the information that he and others were given at the time leading up to the Iraq War suggested that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed a huge and immediate threat to world peace, and that he, and others, were essentially misled. I'm sure that he would tell you that Putin's invasion of Ukraine is completely different and unjustifiable.
But Putin is doing no different now, really, than George W. Bush did eleven years ago. And the Russian Parliament that is empowering him to do this now is not much different than the American Congress was back then, when they empowered Bush to go ahead with his invasion on highly trumped up charges. An American Congress that John F. Kerry not only was a part of, but a leader of. Kerry had Presidential aspirations, and he almost gained the White House in 2004. In fact, what prevented him from becoming the 44th President of the United States was the same exact thing that prevents people from taking him too seriously now: hypocrisy. A lack of credibility is the result, and it is why his waging his finger in the face of Russia, lecturing them about their conduct, seems almost laughable, rather than enlightened, or anything else.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not condoning Putin, or Russia. They are in the wrong, and had no business invading a sovereign nation.
It's just that that Kerry is just about the last person in the world to make such headlines condemning Russia's action. Few people would have seemed more ridiculous. George W. Bush, and certainly Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfelt, surely. Condoleeza Rice, too. Hell, maybe even Colin Powell.
John Kerry is right up there, too. Ultimately, he used Iraq for political gain, bending with the political winds of the moment to try to make himself look as good as humanly possibly no matter what the situation. It backfired, because people saw right through it. Liberals and conservatives alike felt that they could not trust Kerry, because he obviously wanted it both ways: he wanted to gain the trust of those who were vehemently against the war, while also appearing like a responsible and "patriotic" American leader who was acting accordingly when a supposedly serious threat was facing the country. By trying to play it both ways, I certainly did not like or respect Bush and his cronies in the White House, but at least they did not change their minds at each political turn. They remained consistent throughout, like them or hate them.
Kerry instead underscored, and truly represented, the very worst that the American political system represented. In the process, he showed that, as a "leader", he has the spine of a jellyfish, being unwilling to stand up solidly for what he feels is right. That he was just a political poser.
But, by providing such a glaring example of American hypocrisy at it's worst, I can at least say one thing about John Kerry: he has finally found the consistency that he so lacked in 2004. Say what you will about him, but John Kerry was, and remains, ever the blatant hypocrite.
Here are links to articles that I used, and proved helpful, in allowing me to write this blog entry:
"Today in US hypocrisy: Kerry slams Russia for 'invading another country' on 'trumped-up pretext'" by Timothy McGrath of Global Post, March 3, 2014:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/war/140303/john-kerry-slams-russia-invading-another-country-forgets-about-iraq-war
"Putin’s ‘completely trumped-up pretext’" by Steven Benen of MSNBC, March 3, 2014:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/putins-completely-trumped-pretext
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